Call for Participation
Sixth Semantic Web Challenge Open Track and Billion Triples Track
<http://challenge.semanticweb.org/>
International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2008)
26-30 October 2008, Karlsruhe, Germany
We invite submissions to the sixth annual Semantic Web Challenge, the
premiere event for demonstrating practical progress towards achieving
the vision of the Semantic Web.
The central idea of the Semantic Web is to extend the current
human-readable web by encoding some of the semantics of resources in a
machine-processable form. Moving beyond syntax opens the door to more
advanced applications and functionality on the Web. Computers will be
better able to search, process, integrate and present the content of
these resources in a meaningful, intelligent manner.
As the core technological building blocks are now in place, the next
challenge is to show off the benefits of semantic technologies by
developing integrated, easy to use applications that can provide new
levels of Web functionality for end users on the Web or within
enterprise settings. Applications submitted should demonstrate clear
practical value that goes above and beyond what is possible with
conventional web technologies alone.
Unlike in previous years, the Semantic Web Challenge of 2008 will
consist of two tracks: the Open Track and the Billion Triples Track. The
key difference between the two tracks is that the Billion Triples Track
requires the participants to make use of the data set â€“a billion
triplesâ€“ provided by the organizers. The Open Track has no such
restrictions.
As before, the Challenge is open to everyone from academia and industry.
The authors of the best applications will be awarded prizes and featured
prominently at special sessions during the conference.
Goals
The overall goal of this event is to advance our understanding of how
semantic technologies can be exploited to produce useful applications
for the Web. Semantic Web applications should integrate, combine, and
deduce information from various sources to assist users in performing
specific tasks.
The specific goal of the Billion Triples Track is to demonstrate the
scalability of applications as well as to encourage the development of
applications that can deal with Web data. We stress that the goal of
this is not to be a benchmarking effort between triple stores, but
rather to demonstrate applications that can scale to a Web scale using
realistic Web-quality data.
Minimal Requirements
Submissions for the Semantic Web Challenge must meet the
following minimum requirements:
For the Open Track:
* The meaning of data has to play a central role.
o Meaning must be represented using formal descriptions.
o Data must be manipulated/processed in interesting ways to
derive useful information and
o this semantic information processing has to play a central
role in achieving things that alternative technologies
cannot do as well, or at all;
* The information sources used
o should be under diverse ownership or control
o should be heterogeneous (syntactically, structurally, and
semantically), and
o should contain substantial quantities of real world data
(i.e. not toy examples).
* The application has to be an end-user application, i.e. an
application that provides a practical value to domain experts.
Although we expect that most applications will use RDF, RDF Schema, or
OWL this is not a requirement. What is more important is that whatever
semantic technology is used, it plays a central role in achieving
interesting new levels of functionality or performance.
It is required that all applications assume an open world, i.e. that the
information is never complete.
Additional Desirable Features
In addition to the above minimum requirements, we note other desirable
features that will be used as criteria to evaluate submissions.
* The application provides an attractive and functional Web
interface (for human users)
* Rigorous evaluations have taken place that demonstrate the
benefits of semantic technologies, or validate the results obtained.
* The application should be scalable (in terms of the amount of data
used and in terms of distributed components working together)
* Novelty, in applying semantic technology to a domain or task that
have not been considered before
* Functionality is different from or goes beyond pure information
retrieval
* The application has clear commercial potential and/or large
existing user base
* Contextual information is used for ratings or rankings
* Multi-media documents are used in some way
* There is a use of dynamic data (e.g. workflows), perhaps in
combination with static information
* The results should be as accurate as possible (e.g. use a ranking
of results according to context)
* There is support for multiple languages and
accessibility on a range of devices
For the Billion Triples Track
* The primary goal is to for submissions to show how they add value
to the very large triple store. This can involved anything from
helping people figure out what is in the store via browsing,
visualization, etc; could include inferencing that adds
information not directly queriable in the original dataset; could
involve showing how ontological information could be tied to
part(s) or the whole of the dataset; etc.
* The tool or application has to make use of at least a significant
portion of the data provided by the organizers.
* The tool or application is allowed to use other data that can be
linked to the target dataset, but there is still an expectation
that the primary focus will be on the data provided.
* The tool or application does not have to be specifically an
end-user application, as defined for the Open Track Challenge, but
usability is a concern. The key goal is to demonstrate an
interaction with the large data-set driven by a user or an
application. However, given the scale of this challenge, solutions
that can be justified as leading to such applications, or as
crucial to the success of future applications, will be considered.
It is desired that all applications assume an open world, i.e. that the
information is never complete. However, applications that can show
useful ways to â€œclose the worldâ€